Visual Perception Lecture 2 talks about some Gestalt Principles and Its possible importance to visual arts.

1. Visual Perception
Gestalt Principle
Importance of Visual Perception in Art
Elements of Art
Art Visual Perception * Lecture 2
Philippine Women’s College of Davao
Wilfred Dexter G. Tañedo

2. Review: Identify the Images based on
Perceptual Processing Categories
Visual Discrimination
ability to be aware of
the distinctive features of
forms including shape,
orientation, size, and color.

3. Review: Identify the Images based on
Perceptual Processing Categories
Visual Figure Ground
ability to distinguish an
object from irrelevant background
information

4. Review: Identify the Images based on
Perceptual Processing Categories
Visual Closure
ability to recognize
a complete feature from
fragmented information.

5. Gestalt Psychology
 Tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire and maintain
meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.
 The central principle of gestalt psychology is that the mind forms a
global whole with self-organizing tendencies.
 This principle maintains that when the human mind (perceptual system)
forms a percept or gestalt, the whole has a reality of its own,
independent of the parts.
 "The whole is other than the sum of the parts” by Kurt Koffka
 The Founders of Gestalt Psychology: Max Wertheimer, Kurt
Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler. Created sometime in 1912.

6. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
We impose visual organization on stimuli

7. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
Illusory
Contours
The Kanisza triangle as figure-ground illusory contours

8. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
Three Main Principles:
Grouping (Proximity, Similarity,
Continuity, Closure)
Good of Figure or Law of Pragnanz
Figure/Ground Relationships

9. Gestalt Laws of Grouping
Humans naturally perceive objects as organized patterns
and objects.
Gestalt psychologists argued that these principles exist
because the mind has an innate disposition to perceive
patterns in the stimulus based on certain rules.
Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Good Continuation, Common
Fate, and Good Form

10. Law of Proximity
States that, all else being equal,
perception tends to group stimuli that
are close together as part of the same
object, and stimuli that are far apart as
two separate objects.
This allows for the grouping
together of elements into larger sets,
and reduces the need to process a
larger number of smaller stimuli.
The brain groups together the
elements instead of processing a large
number of smaller stimuli, allowing us to
understand and conceptualize
information more quickly

11. Law of Similarity
States that, all else being
equal, perception lends itself to seeing
stimuli that physically resemble each
other as part of the same object, and
stimuli that are different as part of a
different object.
Allows for people to distinguish
between adjacent and overlapping
objects based on their visual texture
and resemblance. Other stimuli that
have different features are generally
not perceived as part of the object.
Our brain uses similarity to
distinguish between objects who may
lay adjacent to or overlap with each
other based upon their visual texture.

12. Law of Similarity in connection with Shape,
Scale and Color
What Principle of Art is exhibited
by this examples?
Pattern/Repetition/Rhythm

13. Law of Good Continuation/Continuity
States that when there is an
intersection between two or more objects,
people tend to perceive each object as a
single uninterrupted object.
This allows differentiation of stimuli
even when they come in visual overlap.
People have a tendency to group and
organize lines or curves that follow an
established direction over those defined by
sharp and abrupt changes in direction

14. Law of Closure States that the mind has a
tendency to see complete figures or
forms even if a picture is incomplete,
partially hidden by other objects, or if
part of the information needed to make a
complete picture in our minds is missing.
For example, if part of a shape’s
border is missing people still tend to see
the shape as completely enclosed by the
border and ignore the gaps. This
reaction stems from our mind’s natural
tendency to recognize patterns that are
familiar to us and thus fill in any
information that may be missing.

15. Law of Common Fate
States that when visual elements are
seen moving in the same direction at the
same rate (optical flow), perception associates
the movement as part of the same stimulus.
This allows people to make out
moving objects even when other details (such
as the objects color or outline) are obscured.
Application of The Law of Common
Fate is used extensively in user-interface
design: For example where the movement of
a scrollbar is synchronized with the movement
(i.e. cropping) of a window's content viewport;
The movement of a physical mouse is
synchronized with the movement of an on-
screen arrow cursor, and so on.

16. Law of Pragnanz (Law of Good Figure/Law of
Simplicity)
States that people tend to order their experience in
a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetrical, and
simple.

17. Law of Good Figure
States that people have the
tendency to group together forms of
similar shape, pattern, color, etc.
Even in cases where two or
more forms clearly overlap, the
human brain interprets them in a way
that allows people to differentiate
different patterns and/or shapes.
An example would be a pile of
presents where a dozen packages of
different size and shape are wrapped
in just three or so patterns of
wrapping paper.

18. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
on Figure/Ground Relationships
Figure/Ground Relationships between
these 3 Elements:
Figure – seen as the foreground
Ground – seen as the background
Contours – “belong” to the figure

19. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
Reversible Figure/Ground
relationship

20. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
Reversible Figure/Ground
relationship
Can be affected by the
principle of smallness:
Smaller areas tend to be seen
as figures against a larger
background.

21. Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
Reversible Figure/Ground
Relationship:
Tessellation – interlocking
figure/ground
M.C. Escher

22. In General
 Gestalt laws of Grouping organize the
visual scene into units
 The Law of Pragnanz, or Goodness of
Figure creates the simplest most meaningful
pattern
 Figure/Ground relationships define
important parts of the scene

23. Importance of Visual
Perception in Arts
 Builds up the Elements of Art and Principles
of Design/Art
 Distinguish one art form to the other
 Creates the point of interest or disinterest in a
work of art (Commercial and Design Industry
has been relying on these studies of Visual
Perception)
 Recognized Creativity of Specific person or
group of people

24. Assignment for June 23
 Review on the Lecture 1 and Lecture 2
for a quiz on Tuesday, June 23.
 Read on further on the Element of Art:
Line, its properties and effectiveness in
an art work